NewsBeat

18 NewsBeat March 2019 Back to the homefront F orget the presidential nominating conventions and inaugurations, the Supreme Court confirmations and landmark decisions, the exotic foreign destinations and the conflict zones. Of all the jobs I've had as a journalist, the one that now looms as the most important?—?the one where, I have come to believe, I had the most impact?—?was the four years I spent as a general assignment reporter for my hometown paper. Thanks to its cheapskate owners, The Pittsburgh Press, when I got there, looked like lovingly well-preserved set of "The Front Page": scuffed linoleum floors, desks thoroughly battered by the three shifts of reporters who shared them, old fashioned phones on stems and, yes, a switchboard with a switchboard operator. The assignments were not calculated to win you the Pulitzer Prize: I wrote obits and golden wedding anniversaries, made up the obligatory (and egregious) puns with which we always concluded the daily weather report. Once, I climbed up a ladder to interview roofers about what it was like to work in a heat wave. I got to cover events like the Great Tomato Festival. But I also spent a night with a bunch of kids in a county-run dormitory to find out what it was like to be a ward of the state. I nosed through neglected ledger books to uncover how officials in our region's small, under-covered municipalities had been ripping off taxpayers while no one was looking. I spent months covering a state legislative race and unearthed records that helped keep a crooked candidate from winning the seat. My colleagues were a motley bunch of misfits right out of Damon Runyon. The leading poet of the rewrite desk was an amiable alcoholic who had to be retired to the newspaper morgue after every lunch hour to do "historical research." The cop shop reporter kept a revolver in his desk. Our political editor had a nervous habit of scratching his back with a pen?—?uncapped. I sat behind him and got to study the results on his shirts, intricate, Miro-like scribbles. The artist also had an itchy style of interviewing. "What in the hell, I mean WHAT IN THE HELL do you think you are doing?" he would bellow at hapless souls who tried to justify their candidacies for various local and statewide offices at a gunmetal grey metal table we kept right in the middle of the newsroom for not-so- intimate tête-à-têtes with such dignitaries. Such was my support group. Once, after getting off the phone with a woman who, despite having given me a lengthy interview the day before had now decided it should all be off the record, I got a visit from an assistant city editor. He had noticed my look of consternation and wanted to know what was up. When I explained, he didn't hesitate: "Did you tell her to go f?—?k herself?" By KATHLEEN KIELY Before laptops and cell phones: Kathy Kiely phoning in a story to The Pittsburgh Press. Credit: Lynn Johnson I… spent a night with a bunch of kids in a county-run dormitory to find out what it was like to be a ward of the state. I nosed through neglected ledger books to uncover the ways officials in our region's small, under-covered municipalities had ripping off the taxpayers or misusing their money. I spent months covering a state legislative race and unearthed records that helped keep a crooked candidate from winning the seat. Fixing democracy means reviving local news

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